You are here

Ohio Gadfly Daily

Answer eliminator function. Highlighting tool. Line-reader option to read passages one line at a time. Answer review buttons. Cross-page navigation. Everything but the “phone a friend” lifeline. Are we talking about the latest electronic game? No; it’s the online PARCC exams being administered for real for the first time in Ohio soon. Sounds fantastic. Not only that, but this year schools have the option of going all-electronic, all-pencil, or a split among their tests. It is fascinating to note which districts took which option. (Columbus Dispatch)

Walnut Township Schools in Fairfield County is facing the possibility of fiscal emergency status, despite being the 42nd-richest district in the state (out of 600+). What’s the issue? Some fancy lakefront property in an otherwise rural district and a series of failed levies. This is not a unique situation across Ohio, but what is different in this story is the nuanced discussion of how state and local funding combine to fund districts in Ohio. It is a nuance largely lost in most newspaper stories about school funding, replaced by unsupportable claims of charter and voucher poaching of “our money”. Some hard decisions ahead in Walnut Township, for sure, but it seems that their leadership is clear-eyed and properly focused. Best of luck to them. (Lancaster Eagle Gazette)

As we noted last week, the new list of EdChoice-eligible district schools was released by ODE. The bottom line is that more schools (and likely more students) are eligible than last year due

The Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission and its various committees have quietly continued their work through the election season and into the new year. The committee working on K-12 education met this week and heard yet more testimony on that old bugbear phrase “thorough and efficient”. On the upside, most everyone involved believes that they’ve heard more than enough testimony on the issue. On the downside, the committee chair is not sure a consensus has emerged among the members: elimination, replacement, redefinition, additional language. All are still on the table, but hopefully we’re a step closer to a vote. (Gongwer Ohio)

As you may have heard, state superintendent Richard Ross released ODE’s report on the state of standardized testing in Ohio yesterday. In it we learn that the anecdotal stories of “test mania” that made headlines during legislative testimony last year are largely unsubstantiated by facts. However, there is a lot of good information in the report, as well as actionable recommendations from Ross about ways to cut testing and test-prep time…if that’s what the right folks decide to do. What will come of this report is yet to be seen – administrative rules, legislation, guidance to schools, more study. All are possible. It probably depends on who actually takes up the recommendations and decides to run – thoughtfully – with them. And to whom they run. Hopefully it won’t come down to whomever shouts the loudest. (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Anyone who’s read my Ohio Gadfly pieces knows that I’m an advocate of “blowing up” entrenched ways of doing business, especially if done for the betterment of students. It’s nice to see that the venerable – and super-entrenched – Catholic education system may be looking to do just that. St. Francis de Sales High School in Toledo is not only adding middle school grades to its structure next year, but is also creating a pathway for those new middle schoolers to earn HS credit while still in middle school. Love it. One also assumes that St. Francis, being a school that accepts EdChoice vouchers, will also be able to accept voucher students in those lower grades as well. Fanastic! (Toledo Blade)

In Monday’s post, we examined the achievement gains Ohio has made on the NAEP exams from 2003 to 2013. Needless to say, Ohio’s gains were not all that impressive. In this post, I look at how Ohio fares along the “poverty-gap closing” measure used in EdWeek’s Quality Counts report. (This metric is the difference in NAEP achievement between low- and high-income students—and how that gap has changed over time.) The achievement gap between poor and well-off children is substantial across the entire nation, Ohio included, and thus minimizing the differences in achievement levels is a worthwhile policy objective (preferably, by lifting the achievement of poor students, not through reductions in wealthy-students’ performance). The chart below displays the “poverty gap” trend in Ohio, along with several other states: four other Midwestern states, the four most-populous states, and the national average. Among these states, Ohio had the largest increase in the achievement gap; its gap grew 3.3 points from 2003 to 2013. The state also ranked near the bottom nationally on this indicator—38th in the nation, taken as an average of its math and reading ranks. Meanwhile, New York was the U.S. leader in achievement-gap closing during this time period, shearing off 5.2 points in its gap between low- and high-income students. Ohio has a growing achievement gap between its poor and wealthy students, and in fact, one of the worst achievement-gap trends in the nation.

A little quiet in terms of education news today. The Ohio House named the new Education Committee Chair earlier this week. He is Rep. Bill Hayes of Pataskala. While he discusses possible charter school reform efforts in this interview with journalist Ben Lanka, the main topic is Common Core. The new Ed Chair says he knows for certain that repeal efforts will begin again in the legislature and that he, for one, looks forward to the debate. In terms of where he himself stands, he offers that he is “a supporter of local control for school districts.” This is good news, obviously, as the hours of testimony from district teachers and superintendents and elected board members the House heard in 2013 and 2014 was clear in its overwhelming support for Common Core. (Mansfield News Journal)

Lorain City Schools has a new board president. He is, as you might expect, quite a cheerleader for his district. He is fairly candid about the long term financial woes (he himself was cut from the teaching staff during a reduction in force) that landed them under state fiscal oversight. He is also fairly candid about the long term

As you may know, it was a big day for Ohioans yesterday. A time when winners really got to celebrate. That’s right: inauguration day for a host of our elected officials. One of those being sworn in for a second term was State Auditor Dave Yost. In his inauguration speech, he promised continued (yes, continued) diligence in ferreting out problems in the state’s charter school sector. "We audit every charter school now…,” he reminded those folks who think this is not the case. “I think there's some things that need to be addressed. There's multiple ways of doing it and that debate will unfold and I'll be part of it over the next few months." Nice. (Gongwer Ohio)

But that wasn’t the only big news in Ohio yesterday. There was also a nailbiter to which all eyes were glued, with supporters on both sides rooting for their favorites and following every twist and turn as it happened. That’s right: the election of a new president and vice president of the state board of education. For the record, it was Gunlock and Elshoff, two board vets, FTW. The Dispatch’s version of the story focuses on appointed vs. elected members vying for the top posts. The Plain Dealer’s version of the story focuses on the party affiliation of the contestants, those who nominated them, and those who voted for them.

And let’s not forget about the big day that rookies had yesterday. Newbies getting their first taste

Financing public education has historically been the joint responsibility of state and local governments. But while traditional districts have long had access to both state and local sources of revenue, nearly all Ohio charter schools tap state funds alone. The reason: Unlike districts, charters do not have the independent authority to levy taxes on local property. Meanwhile, districts have been loath to share local funding with charters. The only exceptions in Ohio are eleven Cleveland charters, which together received $2.2 million in local revenue for 2012–13 as part of a revenue-sharing plan with the district. As a result, Ohio charters operate on less overall taxpayer support than districts.

Despite the stark fact that charters rarely receive local funds, a few groups are mounting attempts to claim that somehow charters receive proceeds from local taxes. Their claims are false. First, state data contradict any proposition that local funding directly flows to charters. Second, while some charters may receive more state aid than districts, on a per-student basis, this difference in state funding is simply a product of the state funding formula. It is not a result of local funds indirectly going to charters, as some have suggested.

The facts are the facts

Let’s lay out the facts. Practically all public-charter schools in Ohio receive zero funding from local taxes. State law does not give charters taxing authority, so they are wholly reliant on state and federal funds and on charitable donations. Meanwhile, Ohio vests school districts—their boards, specifically—with taxing...

Over the course of 2014, a series of reports from the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) spotlighted some serious issues with education schools in Ohio. The Buckeye State boasts performance reports that analyze teacher preparation programs, but these reports merely show how little is expected of candidates prior to their acceptance into a teacher preparation program. Furthermore, Ohio doesn’t have minimum standards or clear consequences for poor programs. NCTQ is right that our teacher preparation programs need to get better in two key ways: improving candidate selection and strengthening teacher training. Here’s how.

Candidate selection

Right now, Ohio sets a low bar for admission into ed schools. Countries with the highest scores on PISA[1]—like Singapore and Finland—restrict admissions into teacher preparation programs to only their best students. In fact, in Finland, becoming a teacher is such a competitive process that only about one in every ten applicants will be accepted to study to become a primary school teacher. This is similar to what Teach For America does: In 2014, more than 50,000 people applied to join TFA, and only 5,300 were admitted—an 11 percent acceptance rate.

The intense screening process is designed to select only the candidates who are most likely to succeed. In Finland, for example, teacher candidates are chosen based on exam results, their high school diploma, and their out-of-school activities. They then complete a written exam on assigned pedagogy books, participate in an observed clinical activity...

The nineteenth edition of Education Week’s Quality Counts report is out, and while Ohio outperforms over thirty states, the results show that there is still much work to be done. The 2015 report, which has a new evaluation system that focuses on outcomes rather than policies and processes, indicates that the nation as a whole declined from a C+ in 2013 (when grades were last given) to a C in 2015. Ohio also declined, moving from a B- in 2013 to a C in 2015. The report rates states’ quality along three key dimensions: Chances for Success, which takes into account indicators like family characteristics, high school graduation rates, and workforce opportunities; K–12 Achievement, which rates academic performance, performance changes over time, and poverty-based gaps (as measured by the NAEP assessments); and school finance, which includes measures of funding equity across schools. Ohio’s overall score, which is the average of the three categories, was 75.8 out of 100 possible points, which earned a ranking of eighteenth in the nation. In the Chances for Success category, Ohio earned a B-. Most indicators in this category show that Ohio is close to the national average, including preschool enrollment (46.5 percent of Ohio three- and four-year-olds compared to 47.3 percent nationally) and percentage of adults with a two- or four-year postsecondary degree (37 percent of Ohio adults compared to 39.9 percent nationally). In the K–12 Achievement category, Ohio earned a C-. Although this places the Buckeye State at sixteenth in the nation...

In the past year, Ohio policymakers have turned their attention to strengthening vocational education. Rightly so; too many non-college-bound students exit high school without the skills to enter the workforce. Blue-collar businesses in Ohio, for example, continue to express concerns about the “skills gap”—the mismatch between the technical abilities they need and the actual skills of their workers. But retrofitting vocational education to meet the demands of today’s employers remains a work in progress. As Ohio schools retool vocational education, they should seek examples of those who have accomplished this very task, and a new paper from the Pioneer Institute provides five case studies of technical high schools in Massachusetts that are well worth reading. A common thread emerges: All of the schools are thriving with the support of their local businesses. These companies have advised the schools on program design (e.g., what skills and jobs merit emphasis), and they have driven fundraising efforts. A couple examples are worth highlighting. One technical school worked closely with advanced manufacturing companies in the area to raise half a million dollars to outfit the school with cutting-edge metal working machines. (Previously, the school had provided technical computer skills, but not actual hands-on machinery experience, leaving manufacturers frustrated.) Another school partnered with the community bank to open an actual retail branch within the school building. High-school students had the opportunity to work alongside full-time employees to learn banking, retail, and marketing skills. Vocational programs that both match local business needs and receive...